The shareholders would lose $340 BILLION dollars in that scenario.
Yeah, J&J ain’t goin’ outta business anytime soon. This also opens up a lot more companies to civil suits.
And here you thought the lapdance company had to pay a lot.
And don’t forget they recently lost a four billion dollar asbestos & baby powder case for giving women ovarian cancer.
So here’s a honest/ingenuous question from a european/german point of view: Why isn’t all that the doctors’ fault who prescribed that stuff although they must have known better or the state’s fault (FDA?) which approved that stuff although it has been known to be very problematic in healthcare sector and is off-limits for most patients in several countries since… [I might have to look it up; but there was an article in the newspaper [Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung] that said people knew for half a century that this stuff is dangerous for common people]… so yeah the pharma company is to blame but why is there med school or a FDA in the first place? [Again, ingenuously but honestly asking].
There is no universal law of the conservation of blame. It could indeed be the fault of all those people. Personally, I would assign blame and fault in proportion to the degree of profit, in which case this looks like a good start.
Only, you know, I’d go after the executives on a criminal basis.
Yeah, there needs to be more shit rolling uphill, as far too long have the wealthy at the top been insulated from any consequence.
Purdue must be fearing a multi-hundred-billion-dollar judgement against them to be proactively offering numbers in this range. Jesus.
That is a holy hell of a spicy meatball. 12 BILLION!
Time to sell your fancy art and pay the piper, Sacklers! Just kidding, it will never come to that, you’ll still be billionaires.
Yeah, add a 0 to those numbers and just MAYBE they will start to realize the size of the problem they have created.
Hi Ginger, it all dates back to when Oxycontin was released. The manufacturer fudged numbers claiming it was way less addictive than other options like normal morphine or Dilaudid. They then marketed the stuff as if it were tic tacs. No, I am not exaggerating. Then they put into place massive programs to push as many pills as possible, rewarding their sellers, doctors, and pharmacies do put as many out as possible.
So the domino effect started when Purdue and others realized just how much profit they could make off Opioid analogues. Along the way there is a ton of blame to go around, and as you point out and I agree - those individuals and those companies should be rotting in jail and their businesses soaked of money. There were lazy doctors who made their entire practice around writing Opioid scipts. There were pharmacies where over 80% of the drugs they dispenses were Opioids. here is the entire Bush administration who suppressed the information about how deadly this outbreak was becoming.
That ain’t shit.
Purdue had increased its earnings from a few billion in 2007 to US$31 billion by 2016. That had increased to US$35 billion by 2017. According to a 2017 article in The New Yorker, Purdue Pharma is “owned by one of America’s richest families, with a collective net worth of thirteen billion dollars”.
That figure is so low it’s insulting…
Note that in the Oklahoma lawsuit, the State wanted J&J to pay 12 Billion or thereabouts, but the judge only gave about half a billion. I heard on NPR that it’s because the judge said in the lawsuit itself the State only gave evidence for one year’s worth of damages and wanted to extrapolate the rest. So the judge only gave the award based on the evidence for that year that the prosecutors laid out the evidence for.
So in future lawsuits if they can present the evidence for multiple years, even a State as small as Oklahoma could be due multiple billions from one company. So 12 billion does seem like a really small figure for all the States of the union.
Meanwhile, If I want my tramadol prescription refilled I have to go to my doctor’s office this week for a “surprise” piss test…
Yea so the idiots in charge punish people who actually need pain control by making their lives a living nightmare. Some states only let you get 3 days worth of meds at a time. Well for someone who lives out in the sticks they can be spending hundreds f dollars a month, losing tons and tons of their personal time, just to pick up their medication every 3 days. And some who are cripplingly disabled, this is beyond devastating.
Yep because this is what happens. They do a knee jerk reaction and push the pendulum the other way so they can say they did something, whether it helps the situation or not.
I think in those cases (Florida) they had been waiting for an excuse to do that anyways.
Anyhow, shouldn’t they be drug testing people AFTER the end of the prescription, when the signs of dependence start and people can be detected when they start down the road to illegal use?
I suspect that’s meant to cut down on dealing, with folks committing fraud to get a large supply that they then distribute, rather than trying to stop addiction for the prescribee.
Oh, then they are testing that you ARE on the drugs you are prescribed. That’s weird but it makes sense.
Open your eyes. Absolute poverty exists in the America and UK. Those below the poverty line and who miss the escape net are always turning up dead of exposure or malnutrition in the UK and there’s no way the US isnt worse.